The monotony of Zuckerberg’s wardrobe has become part of the myth of a man whose personality takes up worryingly little space in our cultural imaginations.

In his first ever public Q. & A. session, in November, 2014, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, told viewers that, although he found Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of him in The Social Network “hurtful,” he had to admit that Aaron Sorkin had nailed his wardrobe. In the film, Eisenberg’s shifty-eyed Mark Zuckerberg shuffles around Harvard’s campus in flip-flops, hoodies, and wrinkled T-shirts. The casual wardrobe suggested an arrogance, a glitch in the nineteen-year-old’s moral compass. On that day in 2014, Zuckerberg was wearing his updated uniform—a nearly tight heather-gray T-shirt and sensible jeans — as he strode pleasantly around a handsome hall in the company’s headquarters, answering questions about his clothes. Does he really wear that same outfit every day? Yes, he said, because “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”

The monotony of Zuckerberg’s wardrobe has become part of the myth of a man whose personality takes up worryingly little space in our cultural imaginations. (His only other well-known trait is his red-green colour blindness, which is said to be the reason that Facebook is designed in shades of blue — a story that, whether true or not, is a fitting metaphor for a society designed to accommodate the men who control it.) It has become a trope of Silicon Valley: the moneyed figure who dismisses fashion, and most other human interests, as inefficient, even as he wears the commoner’s clothes in order to seem humble, “transparent,” and morally steady. Like a cartoon character who plucks from his wardrobe, for all eternity, the same outfit, Zuckerberg’s style is the product of careful branding.

Which is to say that Zuckerberg cares deeply about how he looks. On Tuesday, as the five-foot-seven Zuckerberg testified to Congress about data privacy and security, he sat on what appeared to be a “three-inch cushion,” presumably so as not to appear small or timid before the procession of lawmakers. He wore a navy suit—or, rather (and especially compared to the congenital formal-wear experts in the room), the suit wore him. The tie, Facebook blue, was visibly less than taut, as if knotted nervously, and the jacket was just the tiniest bit large around the shoulders. All this seemed to convey something about Zuckerberg’s forced acquiescence as he cowered before his “Mr. Mark Zuckerberg” nameplate, trying to convince the world that Facebook does not sell our personal data. It is a big deal, the rare occasion when he wears a suit: to meet President Obama and other heads of state; to get married, to Priscilla Chan; or “when $2 billion is at stake,” as MarketWatch wrote, referring to his testimony defending Oculus, a Facebook-owned company. The thing about formal wear is that it requires an ease to pull it off—and Zuckerberg, who wasn’t so much answering questions as tiptoeing around them, was not at all at ease.